Becky Spencer highlights the toll of burnout and explores ways that employers can prevent it.

Ever felt like a hamster on a wheel? Working more and more hours to get your work done but always feeling like you haven’t done enough and, worse still, that the work you have done is, well, not very good. If so, you could be suffering from burnout.

Burnout is not a medical condition. It is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an “occupational phenomenon” which results from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The three key characteristics of burnout are: